USA – -(Ammoland.com)- AB-1927, “Firearms: California Do Not Sell List,” introduced Jan. 24 by Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, purports “to allow a person who resides in California to voluntarily add his or her own name to the California Do Not Sell List,” prohibiting dealers from selling them a gun. Ostensibly offered as an answer to California suicides involving guns, the measure will, among other things, “make it a crime, punishable as a misdemeanor or a felony, to transfer a firearm to a person who is validly registered on California’s Do Not Sell List.”
“I don’t get it,” a puzzled comment poster to an SF Gate report on Bonta’s bill admitted, reflecting a sentiment shared by many. “If they wanted to exclude themselves from buying a gun, wouldn’t they just not buy a gun?”
That’s a fair question, not that Bonta’s bill has a chance of accomplishing stated goals. Of course, it does not, and it goes far beyond just affecting the person who self-reports.
It also makes a criminal of the transferor. The text of the bill does not warn that people “voluntarily” adding their names to the list will be, in effect, self-incriminating if they try to buy (or even touch) a gun afterward. Nor does it specify safeguards and penalties against identity theft and “false positives” that result in a wrong person being denied.
by David Codrea